Pete Willard

Pete Willard (1948-1984) was a white supremacist from Canton, Mississippi, who, along with Billy Ray Cobb, abducted, raped, and beat the ten-year-old African-American girl Tonya Hailey in 1984. While being taken to the courthouse for trial, the two rapists were gunned down by Hailey's father Carl Lee Hailey in an act of vigilantism.

Biography
Pete Willard was born in Canton, Mississippi in 1948, growing up in a rural white family. He became a white supremacist, and he spent much of his time committing hateful acts against the African-American community alongside his best friend, Billy Ray Cobb. In 1984, the two of them drunkenly drove around in their pickup truck, throwing beer bottles at black families, and they later came across the ten-year-old Tonya Hailey walking home from the local store with bags of groceries. Cobb threw a beer bottle at Tonya's head, and the two men proceeded to rape her in the back of their truck before attempting to lynch her. They failed, and they were later arrested by Sheriff Ozzie Walls. After it became likely that the two men would be acquitted by an all-white jury, the girl's father Carl Lee Hailey entered the courthouse with an M16 and opened fire on Willard and Cobb as they were escorted up the courthouse steps by policeman Dwayne Looney. Willard and Cobb were killed, while Looney was wounded by a ricocheting bullet. The murders of Cobb and Willard led to Hailey being put on trial, and later acquitted, for their murders.